


Easy Out

by la_dissonance



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Sibling Incest, Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 18:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12823392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_dissonance/pseuds/la_dissonance
Summary: "We're just saying, we think they should kiss." The actor looks over his shoulder to his counterpart, who nods in support.Loki, in his disguise as Odin, gestures for the stagehands to stop clearing the minimal rehearsal set. "Excuseme?"





	Easy Out

"We're just saying, we think they should kiss." The actor looks over his shoulder to his counterpart, who nods in support.

Loki, in his disguise as Odin, gestures for the stagehands to stop clearing the minimal rehearsal set. " _Excuse_ me?"

"At the end," the actor adds helpfully, as if the location of the proposed kiss is its biggest sticking point. "As Loki breathes his dying breath, they should kiss."

Loki lets that hang there for several seconds, but the pair of actors just look at him expectantly, as if no other explanation or justification is called for. 

"There's no kissing in the script," he says, when it becomes evident he has to say something.

The other actor gives a gracious bow of his head. "No, your Majesty. The script is flawlessly conceived, of course. This is a mere frivolity, a bit of artistic license in the interpretation."

Loki knew there was a reason he likes these actors better than the last batch.

"Hmm," Loki says. He takes a sip of wine and hands his cup absently back to the cup-bearer. "Tell me something: why should I allow you to adulterate the original work, penned by my own hand? I will not hesitate to relieve you of your positions, if need be."

The actors share a nervous glance. The one playing Loki speaks this time. "We rehearsed the scene as written many times, of course. The more we got into our characters, the more it seems only natural that words would lead to deeds. Thor is caught up in the passion of the moment, about to lose his only brother, what else would he do?"

The actor playing Thor nods in agreement. "The pathos! I confess, I myself was so moved by the scene, I spontaneously kissed him on more than one occasion."

"And we all know Thor for his effusive emotions," the Loki actor cuts in. "Can one really imagine Thor himself would have been less moved?"

"It doesn't strike me as very...authentic," Loki says. He accepts a grape from an attendant.

"Respectfully, your Majesty, were you there?"

Loki draws a breath to retort — really, had Odin allowed his reputation to erode so far that his subjects would contradict him to his face? But before he can speak, the other actor says, "And anyway, we all remember how they were."

"My sons were never —" Loki starts, indignant.

"Were never very subtle, right?" The Thor actor winks at his fellow.

"Will not be spoken of like this again," Loki corrects. "It disgraces our dear departed Loki's memory. He will be afforded your respect." He takes another sip of wine to center himself. All of Asgard remembers how he and Thor were? It had been one heady and ill-advised summer, a predictable misunderstanding, and nothing but a few isolated instances in the thousand years since — surely there is nothing to remember.

It's too florid; Loki can't allow it. This is a dignified work of public art. He makes the actors resume their places and run the scene as written, waving away his servers so he can observe uninterrupted. If the actors found his script somehow lacking, they must not have been putting their all into it.

Distressingly, they're right. Now it's been pointed out, it's dreadfully obvious how the scene falls flat. 

Loki calls them back over. "Well, what else is a rehearsal for. Run the scene from the top, with your changes."

Strictly viewed as a work of art, the revised death scene is far more cathartic and satisfying. Privately, Loki might even admit the satisfaction isn't all artistic. As it truly happened, Loki had been dying in his arms, and Thor hadn't kissed him, for his own infuriating reasons. Bad, incorrect reasons which Loki has absolutely no obligation to represent. What else is art, but a refinement upon the mistakes of reality?

The actors stay frozen in their final tableau until Loki shakes himself out of his thoughts and claps for them to break the scene.

"Well, what did you think, your Majesty? Shall we keep it in?"

It's long past the time when other palace workers have gone home to their families, but Loki indulges himself — what good is it to be a king, if one cannot indulge oneself? — and has them run the scene one last time. Something within himself stirs when Thor's stand-in declares his undying love and bends to kiss his brother. As if the dying Loki on the stage really were that cherished; as if the bereaved Thor could find it in him to do nothing else.

The play runs for six months.

After six months, Loki grows bored of the cloying sentimentality of it all, and abruptly fires the entire company of actors.

One month later, he's completely put the episode out of his mind.

-

It's by sheer dumb luck that Thor walks in on a showing of the revised play. Loki doesn't run it every day; he has other things to occupy his time. He's not dwelling in the past, or refusing to move on with his life, or anything so maudlin. 

And he's certainly not trying to expunge a certain previous production from his mind's eye. And even if he were, he's been almost completely successful, and he can only expect that being confronted with the real, live, blithely uninterested Thor would put the final nail in that coffin.

Regrettably, this does not seem to be the case.

The bottom goes out of Loki's stomach when he sees Thor: a game is up, a deception unpleasantly revealed, a celebration cut short. But at the same time, another track in his mind is noting the way the sunlight glints in Thor's hair, and the way a half-smile always seems to lurk under his expression. It's hardly been any time at all; how could these small familiar things surprise him so?

It has to be the influence of those damnable actors: when Thor grabs him, Loki half expects to feel his lips on his neck, to hear a murmured _oh, how I've missed you_ against his skin. But Thor doesn't even seem surprised to find him alive. 

The smallest fraction of himself expects to turn in Thor's arms and kiss him, demand his affection and regard in front of all these people.

Only the smallest fraction, though. Easily quashed.

-

Loki's put the strange compulsion out of his mind entirely by the time he works his way up to the Grandmaster's side on Sakaar. Fantasies of what liberties he might take when he sees Thor again almost never beset him against his will. Or at least if they do, it's only rarely.

Being embroiled in a constant negotiation for his own continued survival helps. Loki had never realized how bored he'd been on Asgard, with no goals to reach toward, no tangled webs of influence to unravel, no intractable puzzles to resolve. It's not just that he's shed his disguise; for the first time in two years he feels truly himself. It's intoxicating.

Seeing Thor again is like a punch to the gut. Just like on Asgard, the bubble bursts: in an instant, the entire expansive world he's built here crashes down to just himself and Thor. How did Thor get here; what might Hela have done to him; how will they get out?

Loki is seized, for an instant, with the feverish urge to gather Thor in his arms and examine him for injury; spirit him away, kiss that befuddled look off his face.

He acts on none of the impulses, and blames them unilaterally on the shock. He should be angry that Thor's arrival has put a hammer to all his carefully laid plans, but instead he feels excited. Now that they're both here, their escape timeline has just accelerated. It's an invigorating challenge.

-

Loki stifles the urge to shift from foot to foot as the elevator creeps slowly upward. He's been stifling a lot of urges, lately, and he's been mostly successful. 

That is, until Thor turns all tender and pragmatic on him, and then he doesn't even know what urge he's stifling. He'd known Thor considered him irredeemable, unworthy; it's another thing to hear him lay it all out. Half of him wants to fling Thor through the glass and out of the elevator just to get him to stop.

The other half would pin Thor to the wall and show him everything he's missing out on, and that part doesn't even bear looking at.

-

By the time Loki's piloting a ginormous spaceship full of freed prisoners through the heart of a neutron star, he's pretty much given up on stifling. There's no use, and it's basically impossible when all of his attention is focused on catching up to Thor, finding him before it's too late, saving him from whatever ridiculous scheme he's concocted to save Asgard.

He consoles himself with the thought that whatever lurid flights of fancy flash across his mind's eye, whatever unspeakable urges he finds himself entertaining, none of it will actually come to pass. He can imagine himself swooping out of the sky like an avenging angel, plucking Thor out of the jaws of death and winning his blinding smile and strong arms and hot mouth — but it's nothing more than a fantasy.

Thor's already made quite clear all the ways he finds Loki lacking; all the ways Loki would have to suborn and bury his own nature for a chance of meeting Thor's approval.

And that's not the stuff of fantasies at all. Far better to stick with alluring impossibilities.

-

When Thor descends upon the Bifrost wreathed in lightning, Loki is forced to rapidly reassess his earlier conclusion. Forget pride, forget not changing for Thor; in this moment, he would do anything for a piece of that. The crackle of electricity in the air makes his skin prickle and thrum; the raw power rolling off Thor in waves takes his breath away.

Yes, Loki thinks. Yes, _yes_.

The moment passes, but even as they fight side by side, Loki is filled with a sense of awe, a fierce sense of elation, so strong it's a surprise he doesn't float up into the air himself on the crest of it. The feeling is so unrecognizable he wonders if perhaps it doesn't even come from himself. Maybe this is Thor's true power.

-

If the strange upswell of emotion is part of Thor's power, it's unaffected by distance, and slow to fade.

Loki doesn't mean to come back to the ship that carries all of Asgard. He's sure he's not expected, and that alone makes him turn the small pleasure-vessel around, track the ship's tiny heat signature out of the shadow of the explosion until he catches up. More than anything, he'd hate to become predictable.

Thor is gratifyingly surprised by his presence. Loki immediately feels himself on much surer footing, even as Thor's gaze pins him in place. Thor looks good — well-rested, battle grime cleaned away, new eye patch in place. His resemblance to Odin is not as disturbing as Loki might have feared.

Loki puts down the trinket Thor threw at him, and schools his face into a more neutral expression. "So, will you?"

Thor doesn't stop smiling. "Will I what?"

"You said you might hug me. Just now, as you may recall."

Thor scoffs and becomes very involved with the bottles on the sideboard. "Oh, it was an idle threat. I won't hold you to it. I know you don't go for all that — hugging, and stuff."

The air still faintly tingles with electricity; the stale recycled air carries the ghost of the scent of the first rain at the breaking of a storm. Loki wonders if Thor's skin would smell of that storm.

"Loki?"

Loki realizes too late that he hasn't said anything when he should have. He also realizes, in a flash, that if Thor had made good on his threat, Loki would have utterly betrayed himself. He'd turn liquid in Thor's embrace, blood running hot and hands grasping. He'd betray his idiotic fantasies and the small, unreasonable part of himself that's convinced that simply because Thor and he had once been, they may be again. It is untenable.

Thor gives him a quizzical look. He's finally managed to fumble the lid off one of the bottles and fill a glass. He lifts the empty one. "Want a drink?"

This is the point in their dance where Loki would typically run away. He had run away that one summer long ago, and kept running away until Thor got the point and everything went back to normal. It had worked splendidly. The problem is, this time he's had two years and several time-warped weeks of running away, and it hasn't worked even a tiny bit. 

Which leaves the second-best option: burning everything down. Loki purses his lips. "No, but pour me one anyway."

Thor pours, confused but compliant, and hands the drink over. Loki knocks it back and sets the empty glass down. He advances into Thor's space. "I'll tell you what I do want."

Thor's hand flickers toward his belt where Mjolnir used to hang, but he stands his ground. His expression shades from confused to wary. "Oh? What's that?"

It's underhanded, it's unkind, it's everything Loki is best at. If he can't put an end to his own inconvenient wanting, well, he can easily make Thor do it for him. He leaves no convenient ambiguity Thor could use to let him down nicely. "I want to kiss you. I want you to shut up and stand there and let me do it."

Loki braces himself for harsh words or painful awkwardness, something strong enough to burn his illusions away. Maybe even blows, if Thor's temper is running hot these days. Instead, Thor's eye goes dark and intent, his lips part. "Loki, you shouldn't need to ask, I — of course, yes."

"Always too noble for your own good," Loki mutters, cursing inwardly. Now he's going to have to go through with it. 

"That's me." Thor puts his glass down on the counter, where it lands with a clatter. 

The color is rising in his cheeks, and Loki can't tell why he would agree to this. Loki won't be the one to back down, though, so he reaches out. Thor leans into his hand when Loki palms his neck, sways toward him when Loki steps closer, makes a soft sound when Loki's lips touch his. Up close, he does smell like thunderclouds

Loki wishes so badly it were real that he shakes with it, and _there_ , that's what needs to be burned out. He pours all the bitterness and frustration into this kiss, turning it into a savage thing. Thor, stubborn to a fault, matches him blow for blow. Loki bites, Thor bites back; he pries sharp fingers between the cracks in Thor's armor and Thor's hand fists painfully in his hair; he kicks Thor's legs apart, crudely, and Thor flips them and backs Loki into the nearest wall. 

When they part, panting, Loki braces himself for the recrimination he's been spoiling for. But what he gets is Thor curling a hand around Loki's waist, leaning in more slowly this time, and sucking a deliberate line of kisses up Loki's neck. He slants his mouth over Loki's before Loki can even form words, and kisses him warm and deep, his hands in Loki's hair and his body pressed up against Loki's own from shoulder to thigh. 

Loki gets lost in it, a little — taking the kisses that melt one into another as if Thor means it, as if he'd do this for the simple joy of it, as if it doesn't come with strings attached. 

He breaks himself out of it soon enough, and pushes Thor back with a hand on his chest. Thor's lips are bitten and red, probably buzzing with ghost sensation the way Loki's are; his breastplate is hanging from one clasp and his bare shoulder underneath is crisscrossed with raised lines from Loki's nails. He looks well on the way to debauchery. 

Thor frowns down at Loki's hand, then at Loki himself, looking a little dazed. He tries to lean back in, and Loki has to push back harder to keep him away.

It takes Loki a second to find his voice. "I'll stop this if you won't. One of us has to."

"Loki —" Thor starts. Loki shoves at him again, and he trips back half a step, off balance.

The words spring easily to Loki's lips now, hard and cold. "If you've already decided I'll never be good enough for you, why start something you won't finish, Thor? Such cruelty doesn't become you."

Thor flinches, which Loki can feel through the hand he still has on the center of his chest. "You came to me, thinking this? I would never — I would hope you don't think so little of me, brother."

Loki scoffs. "I think so little of _you_ , that's rich." 

Thor clasps Loki's hand against his chest with both of his own, trapping it there. "I think the world of you, Loki."

"You've made it perfectly clear that you don't. Recently, even. Do I need to quote your own words back to you?"

Thor squeezes Loki's hand. Loki should prevent this, put some space between them, but he doesn't. "Loki, listen — it's taken me a long time to accept that our lives are on two different paths. The paths may have started in the same place, but they keep getting farther apart, and they may never meet again. It's not a happy thought, but it gives me less grief than when I tried to believe we were still traveling the same path. I thought it might give you some peace to know I've come to terms with it. I'm sorry if I didn't express myself well."

"Then my original question still stands," Loki says. His chest feels hollow. "If you've written me off so easily, why pretend you still care?"

Thor's face is so earnest it nearly hurts to look at. "It was never easy. And it's obvious now that I was wrong. We may be on separate paths, but this whole time they've been converging again and I didn't see."

This conversation has gone badly off the rails. "Because you dragged me along," Loki says through gritted teeth.

"Because of the choices you made. You brought your path closer to mine when I thought — when it was safer to think that was impossible." 

When Loki doesn't reply right away, Thor brings Loki's hand to his mouth and kisses his fingertips, gently.

It's far too much. Loki twists his wrist out of Thor's hold. "Say you were wrong again."

"I was wrong," Thor says, happily. He reaches out to Loki, but stops himself, as if wary of his welcome.

Loki could listen to that all day. Perhaps if this goes well he will, later. Against his better judgement, he takes Thor's hand again. "And that's it, there's no catch?" he asks. "No hidden expectations, no secret accounting of all the ways I'll never live up to your ridiculous standards?"

Thor searches his face. "None. Perhaps one day, our paths may part again — I hope they never do, but none of us can see the future — but you were the one who came here, this time. I should be asking _you_ if you want this."

And finally, after everything, that's a question with an easy answer. Loki hooks a leg behind Thor's knee and destroys their careful distance. "Allow me to make my intentions plain," he says, and kisses Thor as if they're on a battlefield, as if they're castaways on a forgotten planet, as if they're running for their life.

**Author's Note:**

> This was not beta'd, so please feel free to yell at me in the comments if you see any super obvious typos. One time I had a typo in the very first paragraph of a fic and I didn't notice for TWO YEARS because no one said anything, it was unfathomable.


End file.
